A New Cooking Technique for Bitter Greens

Start with 2 bunches of kale, mustard greens or broccoli rabe. Strip kale or mustard leaves from stems (discard stems). For broccoli rabe, separate the florets from the leaves; cut large florets into bite-size pieces. Wash and dry the leaves (and florets). Tear the leaves into small pieces and place everything in a large bowl.

With clean hands, firmly massage and crush the greens until the volume is reduced by about half (1 to 2 minutes). They should look a little darker and somewhat shiny and have a silky, soft texture.

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Interested in finding more ways to eat kale? Click through for some of our favorite kale recipes.

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Crispy Kale with Lemon-Yogurt Dip

"I like the idea of making a healthy kind of potato chip that's not one of those packaged, dehydrated vegetable chips," Seamus Mullen says. He roasts kale with extra-virgin olive oil and garlic until it's crunchy.

Kale is a marvelous green for salads because it's hearty enough to handle hefty ingredients like nuts and meat, plus it doesn't wilt as it sits on the table. When chef Ryan Hardy makes this kale salad for Thanksgiving dinner at Montagna at the Little Nell in Aspen, Colorado, he deep-fries the pecans, but it's quicker (and less messy) to toast them in the oven.

This kale-and-spinach soup has a beautiful complexity. It’s slightly sweet, with a bright note of lemon and the subtle aromatics of thyme, sage and garlic. Japanese yams are marvelously flavorful; they have a dark purplish skin and are snow-white inside.

There’s an amazing tool for transforming bitter, dark leafy greens into a tender, melts-in-your-mouth salad packed with punchy citrus, garlic and Parmesan. And it’s only an arm’s length away: your hands! A few minutes of judicious massaging (think rolfing, not Reiki) will completely transform kale, mustard greens or broccoli rabe into something velvety and soft. The secret is in the squeezing: by doing so you actually start to break down the cell walls, releasing enzymes that split apart the bitter-tasting compounds. That’s great news for anyone who’s wanted to enjoy these greens’ amazing benefits (they’re packed with dietary fiber and bone-healthy vitamin K) but couldn’t learn to love the taste.